[THE experiment proposed by Colonel Pollock for which we are

asking subscriptions may be briefly described as follows. Colonel Pollock declares that if funds sufficient to meet the cost are raised, be will undertake in six months to give a military training to one hundred young Englishmen of between eighteen and twenty of the wage-earning class which will make them as good at drill, at gymnastics, and at musketry as any Regulars of the same length of service, and that in a tactical exercise they will show them- selves tactically more proficient than any company of Regulars chosen from any battalion who have not been specially trained for the competition. He further asserts that these six-months men would be able to meet Continental conscripts. It is clear, if Colonel Pollock can form such a company in six months, that a fact of the utmost importance will have been ascertained, and that we shall be able without misgiving to urge that our present Militia Force shall be organised on the basis of six months' recruit training, with only a week's camp each succeeding year plus local training, upon a system resembling that now followed by the Volunteers. On such a basis we could have a Militia Army of two hundred thousand men whose civil employment would not be injuriously affected,—a force of real value which would yet not impose any intolerable burden on the national resources. The experiment, if a success, should also render impossible the carrying out of the policy of abolishing the Militia put forward by the late Secretary of State for War. It is in view of these considerations that we are endeavouring to obtain the £3,500 which Colonel Pollock considers necessary for his experiment.]

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5

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